How to make a great company, country, person: Slowly, quietly, with discipline.

Yesterday brought a reminder of AA Milne's famous saying that "Sometimes I sits and thinks… sometimes I just sits." It came after hearing ever smiling, big hearted former SAA chief executive Chris Smyth has passed away at a shockingly young age. From Facebook posts by wife Wendy and family, Chris, the modest accountant, leaves an un-fillable hole.

The news sent me to my 15 year old copy of Jim Collins's Good To Great, one of the best business books ever written. Collins's masterpiece provided a reminder that great businesses, like great people, are not those who dominate headlines, spend aggressively or have the flashiest lives. Truly great companies, he argued, are low profile, conservatively managed, below the radar operations which get on with things in a quiet, disciplined manner.

These businesses promote leadership from within, studiously steering away from the quick fixes of mergers or acquisitions that never are. Their process, Collins wrote, "resembled relentlessly pushing a giant flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough and beyond."

Good advice for companies. And countries. And people. The late Chris Smyth, who will be deeply missed by many, reminded me of that.